THE house of C?sar had perished with Nero, and few sober folk can have regretted that it had no living representative to win the fancy of the frivolous¹ people or the blind cupidity² of the Guards. There must have been men living in Rome who had witnessed the whole of that appalling³ degradation⁴, so swift it had been. The C?sars had sunk in little over forty years from the sobriety of Octavian to the insanity⁵ of Nero; their consorts⁶ had fallen from the strong standard of Livia to the insipidity⁷ of Popp?a; the resources of the Empire had been squandered⁸ in spectacles that had left its people nerveless and debauched; the old Roman ideal of character had been almost obliterated¹⁰ in the Imperial city. It was our concern to see what part the Empresses played in this lamentable¹¹ history of four decades. It is, on the whole, one that their biographer must blush to acknowledge. We must remember, however, that corrupt¹² rulers would necessarily choose weak or corrupt wives, and we cannot affect surprise or disappointment when we find them floating in the swift current.